


A Queen in Name and Deed

by lifeisyetfair



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cute Kids, Forced Marriage, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Imperialism, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-03-05 03:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13378854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeisyetfair/pseuds/lifeisyetfair
Summary: Tar-Míriel's efforts to aid Amandil and the Faithful after Ar-Pharazôn marries her and usurps her throne. She may not have the power of a ruling queen, but she will fight for her people nonetheless.Chapter 2: Grieving her father's decline, Tar-Míriel finds solace in an old friend--but he has his own agenda.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thearrogantemu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thearrogantemu/gifts).



> This is just the prologue--three more chapters will follow, featuring these characters as adults. Thanks to MythopoeticReality for the beta read!

Pharazôn came running back to her, pouting and holding back tears.  
  
“They’re fighting again,” he announced sullenly. “My dad and your dad. They’re not going to let us play together anymore.” He kicked the air aimlessly. Míriel watched him, a familiar despair taking root. She wanted to be anywhere but here.  
  
Amandil drew near to Pharazôn.  
  
“It’s going to be all right.” Though not as much older than his distant cousins as he looked, being tall for his age, Amandil often tried to play the comforter and smoother of hurts among them.  
  
This presumption didn’t go over well with the youngest of the group.  
  
“Your dad, too,” Pharazôn lashed out. In contrast to calm, lanky Amandil, his small frame shook with emotion. “He always takes Uncle’s side. Why can’t they leave my dad alone?”  
  
Amandil looked like he wanted to argue, and Míriel didn’t think she could stand watching the fighting replicate itself in miniature amongst her cousins and best friends.  
  
So before Amandil could open his mouth, she said, “How about we run away?”  
  
Amandil’s eyes got wide and Pharazôn said, “Stupid, we’re on an island. How far would we get?”  
  
“We could steal a ship.” Míriel could see it already, the three of them standing on the prow, not even bothering to wave goodbye to the grown-ups, and before them….  
  
“Where would we go?” Amandil asked, and Míriel said “East” at the exact moment Pharazôn said “West.”  
  
“Now who’s stupid?” Míriel said after a moment where no one was sure who was going to speak. “If we sail west, we’ll have to come back eventually, otherwise we’ll break the Ban. But if we go to Middle-earth, we can stay at one of the settlements.”  
  
“Who cares about the Ban? That’s just a silly rule to scare us away from the Undying Lands!”  
  
“I’m the princess, so I get to decide--.”  
  
“That’s not fair!”  
  
“Besides it was my idea!”  
  
“Enough!” Amandil’s voice cut through the bickering. “It’s a tie, and I haven’t voted yet, and I say let’s go East.”  
  
“Of course you would,” Pharazôn said, screwing up his face. “You two are ganging up on me, just like your parents.”  
  
“But Pharazôn,” Míriel said, keen to steer them away from the topic of the grown-ups, “Imagine all the riches and stuff you could win in the East. You could even be a king yourself! It’s all there for the taking!” She gestured grandly in the direction of Middle-earth, hidden behind the mountain.  
  
Pharazôn’s face unwrinkled a tiny bit.  
  
“Fine. East. Now how do we get the ship?”  


  
  


The nearby port looked westward, towards elves and gods, but they could easily turn the ship around, once they had control of the crew. Short shadows followed them as they made their way down the mountain and through the city streets. They had all changed into their plainest, oldest clothes to avoid being detected on their way to the docks, but carried their swords, as well as some jewelry of Míriel’s for any unexpected expenses, in a large bag between them.  
  
“That one,” said Pharazôn, eyeing a spectacular merchant galleon. It took Míriel and Amandil’s combined efforts to convince him that a less conspicuous ship would better serve their purposes.  
  
Amandil, being oldest and tallest, was nominated to lead the heist. The three children leapt onto a smallish caravel, dodging the guard who drowsed in the noonday sun, and Amandil drew his sword on the boatswain.  
  
“We’re taking over this ship,” he announced, a bit more nervously than Míriel had hoped.  
  
“Right,” said the boatswain. “I don’t know where you got that sword, but you will put it down and get off this ship. Now.”  
  
Míriel, with a great sigh, turned back towards land, and Pharazôn followed her. But Amandil didn’t move.  
  
“Did you hear me?” yelled the boatswain, and Míriel looked back to see Amandil, shaking, point with the sword and repeat, “We’re taking over this ship.”  
  
The boatswain, to Míriel’s surprise, stepped back, and Amandil advanced a few paces. Then the boatswain drew from the wall behind him a terrifying whip, and brandished it.  
  
“Right,” he said again. “Get away from here, kid, or else.”  
  
Amandil winced, but didn’t move, and Míriel thought run, run, you idiot as the whip cracked through the air…  
  
But it was the boatswain who fell, the whip flying from his hands as he stumbled. Pharazôn had charged him, a small torpedo, crying “You leave Amandil alone!”  
  
The boatswain shoved Pharazôn away. Staring at Amandil’s sword, and then at Míriel, he seemed to fit the pieces together.  
  
“You’re the princess,” he said.  
  
And that was the end of Míriel’s escape.

  
  


“You. Absolute. Imbeciles.”  
  
Míriel’s uncle was furious, eyes flashing like the jewels at the clasp of his mantle, and for once, her father seemed to agree with him.  
  
Pacing back and forth, Pharazôn’s father went on, “No one knew who you were. You could have been seriously hurt! I knew that Amandil was a bad influence on you--.”  
  
“Leave my son out of this,” snapped Amandil’s father. “Like as not, it was your Pharazôn who came up with this stunt.”  
  
“My son was just trying to protect your idiotic--.”  
  
“It was me,” said Míriel, but her voice didn’t make a dent in the wall of noise. “It was me!” She couldn’t stand to see them fighting again.  
  
Neither Pharazôn’s nor Amandil’s father took notice of her, but her own father, Tar-Palantir the king, quelled them all with his deep voice. “What was you, Míriel?”  
  
Oops.  
  
Míriel summoned all her courage and said, “It was my idea to steal the ship. Please don’t be mad at Amandil and Pharazôn, they just did what I wanted them to.”  
  
This momentarily silenced the grown-ups.  
  
“You are all three,” said the king wearily, “confined to the palace until the autumn equinox.”  
  
“And count yourselves lucky it’s not worse,” chimed in Míriel’s uncle. Amandil’s father’s stern glance spoke for itself.  
  
“It’s not fair,” Pharazôn yelled, stamping his feet, while Míriel said, “But Father, the swimming will all be over by then.”  
  
“That’s the idea,” her father said.  
  
“Pharazôn,” Míriel’s uncle said, “If you’d just told me you wanted to go on a sailing adventure, I could have arranged a proper party to go to our settlements on Middle-earth. This was stupid.”  
  
Amandil’s father sighed. “Amandil, you’re supposed to look after the younger children. How can you do that if you follow every madcap idea of theirs, and if your little cousin has to rescue you?”  
  
Míriel looked up at her father. It seemed to be her turn.  
  
“Míriel.” The king turned his melancholy gaze on his daughter. “You’re going to be queen. You can’t lead your people into foolish scrapes. And if you do, it’s your responsibility to get them safely out. You failed at both today.”  
  
Her eyes stung like seawater. “I’m sorry.”  
  
He hugged her tightly, then banished them all to their rooms.  
  
As the three children made their way through the halls, casting longing looks out the wide windows to the sea below, Pharazôn groaned, “Míriel, what a stupid idea. Now we can’t go swimming all summer.”  
  
Míriel had no quick answer to that; the dazzle of sunlight on the water and, still worse, on the white sails of outgoing ships made her sick with longing.  
  
“They’re right; we’re lucky it didn’t end worse,” Amandil said. “Pharazôn, I owe you.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” said Míriel again, and then, more quietly, “But at least they stopped fighting,”


	2. i. outrun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grieving her father's decline, Tar-Míriel finds solace in an old friend--but he has his own agenda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks are owed to my love thearrogantemu for her encouragement, plot discussion, and insightful beta reading/edits (go read her fic please, she is a fantastic writer as well as a wonderful person). 
> 
> My friend PaperRevolution got me into the Silmarillion, cheered me on, and believed in this project (even when it took me six months to update this fic). I shall try to update more speedily in future!

People are always leaving Míriel. Her friends first, her father now. One day she’ll be the one who leaves. But one day is a long way away, and soon she will be queen and trapped.  
  
“How is my father?” is the first thing she asks her secretary every day now. And on good days, he replies, “Much the same.” Today is a bad day.  
  
“Weaker,” he says.  
  
She isn’t ready.  
  
“Is there any other news?”  
  
He squints at her, as if trying to make out her face from a distance.  
  
“Not much. Your cousin Pharazôn has returned for a time from his domains in Middle-earth. I’d advise against telling your father; it would only upset him.”  
  
She files this away the last bit for later, joy unlooked for flooding her with warmth. She didn’t expect this. People are always leaving, but sometimes they come back.

 

Amandil is the first person she tells. He’s leaving her father’s room, and she stops a minute in the antechamber before taking his place.  
  
“Pharazôn’s come home.”  
  
He sighs, and once again she’s reminded of how childish she must seem to him. He’s a widower with grandchildren now, and here she is, still waiting on her father and calling up a childhood friendship. The price of ruling is to put your life on hold for decades, and to watch the person you love most perish before you can act.  
  
“He may not be who you remember, Míriel,” Amandil says finally. “Middle-Earth is not a kind place. I hear he is much changed.”  
  
“Everyone changes,” Míriel says. Everyone but me.  
  
“I only don’t want you to be disappointed,” Amandil continues. “He is grown now, and to the hilt a man of your uncle’s faction. Don’t go looking for what’s no longer there.”  
  
He doesn’t mean to hurt her.  
  
“I had better go in now. Give my best to Isildur and Anarion.”  
  
He nods and bows, and then she’s through the door, not giving him a chance to reply.

 

“What are you running away from?” her father laughs gently. He’s clearly lucid, but yesterday he sat propped up on pillows and today he lies flat. The injustice of mortality strikes forcibly—Amandil’s father spent years doddering, his death almost a relief to his son, but this is still the father she knows, sharp and sweet, and he is slipping through her fingers day by day.  
  
This is the Gift of Men. Eru did not give it lightly. She does not plan to sail for the Undying Lands in blasphemous quest for a cure, but her mind rebels a little against the foundations of the world.  
  
“I don’t know,” she lies, mindful of what the secretary told her. No one she loves will share her joy or even understand it. Not even her father.  
  
“How are you feeling today?” she asks automatically, but he is not fooled. He is still Tar-Palantir the king, and he knows when people are keeping things from him.  
  
“Perhaps I am having a better day than you, child. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” She bites her lip. “I’m happy.” Then it all spills out. “Pharazôn is back, and I’m glad. But no one else seems to be.” Immediately, Míriel feels guilty for burdening a dying man with this. But he is still strong, and she is still his child.  
  
“Pharazôn returned? I had not expected that.” He tries to sit, but slumps back before she can reach him. “He returned before when my brother passed, but he did not stay long.  
Míriel, he is grown much like his father. Promise me you’ll be careful.”  
  
Careful of what? she thinks impatiently, but doesn’t say. She’s not going to cause a scene with her dying father.  
  
Instead she says, “I will, Father.”

 

Politics being what they are, Míriel cannot order a feast for Pharazôn’s return, but she can see him privately, invite him up to her balcony overlooking the sea. He stands now staring east, as if by straining he could make out his settlements, then turns his back on the water and looks at Míriel.  
  
“I missed you more than I expected,” he says, before she can tell him anything. “It’s lonely out there, and there aren’t many women. Well, except the barbarian sort. It’s good to be home, Míriel.”  
  
“It’s good to have you back,” she replies. Everyone wants her to be wary of her cousin, but while he may be grown in stature and bronzed by the sun, his frank regard, his honest eyes, these things haven’t changed.  
  
“I’m sorry about your father,” Pharazôn says. “It’s not easy. But you will make a splendid queen.”  
  
“May that day be long delayed.” They stand there a while, leaning on the railing. The sea breeze plays with Pharazôn’s hair. Míriel notices the copper streaks left by the sun. They used to look quite similar, save for her longer, ever-tangled hair, but the days when she ran through the waves with him, tanned and wiry, are long gone. Now she is pale with the indoor pursuit of governance, and her hair is smooth and intricately pinned.  
  
“Tell me of your ventures in the east. Tell me about the wide world.”  
  
He laughs. “There are things out there you can’t imagine. But mostly it’s a dark, hard land. The servants of Morgoth of old are still there, causing trouble. There are still battles to be won.” He shows her a scar wrapping around his upper arm. “That’s from fighting the creatures of Sauron, the Abhorred.”  
  
Míriel shivers at the name, but Pharazôn seems energized.  
  
He goes on, “We could bring peace and law to that land, rise higher than our forefathers ever dared. Perhaps when you’re queen.” He turns east again, restless.  
  
“Why did you come back?” she asks.  
  
“I heard about your father. I wanted to be with you. Like old times.”  
  
She slumps against him, all the force it took to get through the day bleeding out of her. There’s someone here who understands her.

 

He still says things that bother her—little barbs about the Valar, the occasional unveiled contempt for her faith. She knows Amandil wouldn’t put up with it, but Amandil is busy with family and duty, and Pharazôn is here for her to lean on. His restlessness does not extend to cutting short his visit; when she outright asks him when he’s leaving, he refuses to give a date. Sometimes she fears she’ll wake and find him gone, that he’ll disappear for another decade or two without a farewell. Take me with you, she wants to say, but that’s impossible. Her father is here, and her country. Everything ties her to these shores.  
  
Amandil she still sees from time to time, in the antechamber to her father’s room. They exchange courtesies but, despite her best efforts, little more. He’s drawing away from her, and she resents it.  
  
“Come take the views with me after I return; surely you can’t be that busy,” she says one day.  
  
He looks at her warily.  
  
“Will Pharazôn be there?”  
  
Having her suspicions confirmed gives her no joy.  
  
“And what if he is? We were all three friends, once.”  
  
“We were all three children,” he returns, and as she turns away in a huff, he reaches out to her, his hand resting lightly on her arm. “Míriel. How can you countenance a man who mocks our faith, who rebels against Eru Iluvatar himself? Have your loyalties grown so weak?”  
  
She draws herself up.  
  
“I believe in Eru Iluvatar, and my heart is hallowed to him, but I cannot cast aside a friend for him—nor do I believe he would want me to.” Míriel is shaking, not from anger but from giving voice to the truth that has lain deep inside her all this time. Amandil seems to recognize he’s overstepped.  
  
“Your integrity does you credit,” he says. “But as you cannot cast a friend aside, I cannot feign a friendship I no longer give assent to. You are welcome at any time, but I will not see Pharazôn.”  
  
He kisses her hand and leaves.

 

Tar-Palantir is failing quickly now, and Míriel fears he will not see midsummer. As the sun beats down on their island, his hands grow colder, his skin thinner. Tremors of the body belie his steadiness of mind. He looks at the future without fear, and Míriel fights to hide her own sorrow. She must not trouble him now. Perhaps this is what it means to grow up.  
He asks increasingly to be moved into the light, drawing heat from the outside like a lizard. One day she is supervising the servants as they shift him from bed to chaise. He is as light, as unclinging as a leaf in autumn, about to fall.  
  
She is about to break, and she can no longer do that. So she seeks out the source of his strength.  
  
“Don’t you think it unjust, Father? The Gift of Men?”  
  
His rheumy eyes lock with hers.  
  
“Many a man has asked that before you, my daughter. Why we have to die, while the Firstborn live on. You can find the wisdom of those seekers in the library. I don’t have very much original to add. Except one thing.”  
  
She leans closer. Her throat is clogged, as if her full heart obstructed it.  
  
“I will not die utterly, whatever lies beyond the circles of this world. What I have made in love lives on.” She takes his meaning. When she kisses his forehead, teardrops trickle onto his papery skin.  
  
He draws a wheezy breath to say it anyway.  
  
“You are my immortality…Tar-Míriel.”  
  
Within the week, he is gone.

 

Amandil helps her with the funeral arrangements. She is glad, though she does not have the words to say it. Her feelings have gone clumsy; expressing them is like groping for a small object with cold-numbed fingers. What she meant slides away.  
  
It helps her when she is crowned, though, this chill. She gets through the ceremony without tears and without rage. Long live Tar-Míriel of Numenor, perfect as a statue or the figurehead on a prow. Valar forbid—this she whispers to the night, alone—she should be human.  
  
Amandil, she knows, would catch her if she fell, but Pharazôn gives her permission to say the things she cannot. Sometimes he says them for her. He tells her of what he felt when he lost his own father, and he has known what she feels now—the inadequacy of everything in the face of this blank fact, mortality. She finds herself more and more in his company and, perforce, less often in Amandil’s. Amandil must know these things too, but piety softens and veils his comforting words. She still believes, but her belief is a piercing and a groping in the dark, and she cannot take comfort in what comforts him.  
  
Besides, Pharazôn might leave at any time, and Amandil will always be there.  
  
When Pharazôn comes to her by night, she is too relieved to care about the impropriety. Her cousin has always been a rebel, and at any rate, she has been lying sleepless for hours.  
At least now she will have company.  
  
“I’ve been thinking,” she says, “about Middle-Earth, and what you said. That we might rise higher.”  
  
He smiles, barely perceptible in the darkness.  
  
Míriel goes on, “We would be better stewards of the land and people than Sauron. And what would our ancestors say, if they knew we let a servant of the Enemy rule the lands they came from while we sat comfortably on our island? Surely it was not for sloth that the Valar brought us here.” The Valar are always a tricky proposition with Pharazôn, but he nods nonetheless.  
  
“I knew you would understand,” he says. “We’re meant for greater things. Together.” He grabs her hand and covers it in kisses. A frightening passion in his low voice, he whispers,  
“Sweet Míriel. Let me rule with you. Be mine.”  
  
She thinks she should have seen this coming, for all that cousin-marriage is not their custom. He has been continually in her company, and he has never spoken of another woman.  
But it honestly never occurred to her that their old friendship could be overwritten with new feelings.  
  
He goes on kissing her wrist, her fingers, turning her palm upward to meet his lips. She does not snatch her hand back.  
  
But she says firmly, sadly, “I am my own.”  
  
He looks up and freezes.  
  
“But I love you,” he says with honest bafflement. “I thought you…we could be so much more, the two of us.”  
  
Perhaps the ice in her is gone, because it hurts to hurt him. He has been so much to her.  
  
“I love you too,” she says, but there is no joy in it, no relief. “Pharazôn, I can’t. You’re my friend, my brother in every way that matters. I want to work with you. But not…not like this.”  
  
“Why not?” He sounds like a child, and that strengthens her in her decision.  
  
“We grew up together! You were my little cousin. Don’t try to force something that can never be.” If he weeps, she will comfort him, as he has comforted her throughout her ordeal. But not by giving in.  
  
She does not yet know what it is she wishes for in a spouse—someone who would come back from Middle-Earth for her, who would stand by her in her hour of grief, certainly, but not Pharazôn. She can barely articulate what is wrong with it—they are too close, somehow. And over the last few minutes, he has shown a possessive streak that makes her fear he would completely absorb her.  
  
He reaches for something on her bedside table and strikes a light, and by that light, she sees something new in his face, a triumph mixed with sadness.  
  
“Force,” he says, “is what I had hoped to avoid. One way or another, you will be my wife, and I will be king.”  
  
He calls out, and two of his guardsmen enter the room. For the first time, she sees how far gone he is. That to get what he wants, he is willing to hurt her.  
  
Amandil had warned her, hadn’t he? She grasps for that.  
  
“Amandil will kill you.”  
  
“Then he is less true to our old friendship than I,” Pharazôn says. What terrifies her is that he is not lying; he believes what he says.  
  
The open door reveals even more armed men, many of whom are colonists from Pharazôn’s Middle-Earth garrison towns. She has no doubt these seasoned fighters overpowered her light guard with ease, and though she could call for help even now, she has no desire to see bloodshed in this realm of peace. So she runs.  
  
Míriel charges, head lowered, in her slippers and nightgown, and for a crucial moment, they hesitate, loathe to strike an unarmed woman. She breaks through. Then the men are tripping over each other as the palace’s narrow halls slow them down. Above the clatter of armor, she distinctly hears Pharazôn’s voice.  
  
“Don’t shoot! Let me through, don’t shoot!”  
  
Straining to listen will only slow her down. She kicks off her slippers and outruns them all.  
  
Soon she is in the muggy streets, the soles of her feet touching down on sunbaked cobblestones that have retained their heat long after nightfall. No one is chasing her anymore. They must be securing the palace, solidifying the coup.  
  
They’ve made a mistake, letting her go. She will raise the banner of the queen and meet them in the field, and she will destroy them. Her father gave the throne to her. She will not let her inheritance be stolen by force or guile.  
  
But right now, she is not only Tar-Míriel the queen. She is a woman whose own cousin, whose nearest friend has turned on her and tried to force her to marriage. She is a woman driven from her home by violence, barefoot in the moonlit streets, and with unerring precision, she makes for the home of the only person who will understand the magnitude of this treason.  
  
Amandil’s servant opens the door. He does not recognize her—that much is plain—so she leaves off the royal titles and announces herself as simply Míriel. Then she wonders if that was a mistake, a first concession to an order of things in which she will never rule again.  
  
Heavy footsteps. Amandil takes the stairs slowly—it hits Míriel that he is not of the line of Elros, and is aging faster in more than just life experience. The heavy chain of state that marks his authority as her advisor is thrown over his dressing-gown.  
  
“Míriel, what’s wrong? What are you doing here, why didn’t you send for me at the palace?” He takes in her bare feet, her silence. “Míriel?”  
  
She doesn’t know how to say it. You were right. Pharazôn has changed.  
  
What comes out surprises her.  
  
“He will feel,” she says, “the wrath of the queen.”  
  
Her cold ferocity does not calm him. Quite the opposite.  
  
“Did he hurt you?” It’s a question that could be answered in so many ways. Pharazôn has turned on her, stolen her birthright, betrayed her trust. Has he hurt her? Of course. But not in the way Amandil fears.  
  
“No.” As soon as she answers in the negative, he claps his arm around her. Soon she is sitting on the old velvet sofa she remembers from so many visits, taking a teacup from a servant and spilling out her fear and rage.  
  
“What do you propose to do?” Amandil asks when her story is done.  
  
“Rally loyal troops and take the field against them.” She says it as matter-of-factly as she can. Here on the worn-down velvet where she dandled his child and then his two small grandsons, they are plotting civil war. A dreadful calm has overtaken her, however. She fled here in fear. Now she no longer recognizes the emotion.  
  
Amandil does not swear fealty or even offer support. He hesitates. She is wound too tightly to take the meaning of this before he spells it out.  
  
“Míriel, I wish I thought we could win.”  
  
“You think the soldiers of Numenor would stand with a usurper against the rightful queen?” Disbelief permeates her voice. “He may have brought his colonists and sailors, but I have been here the long decades he has not. I have earned their loyalty.”  
  
“Loyalty to you,” Amandil says carefully, “may not trump the solidarity of shared religion—or lack thereof. Loyalty to Pharazôn is loyalty to his father’s faction, and though I am sorry to say it, the Faithful do not command the hearts of the many.”  
  
“What would you have me do?” Míriel spits. “Give the kingdom into his hands without a fight? Win or lose, I will die a queen.”  
  
“How many others will die with you, Míriel? And when you and they are gone, who will protect the Faithful when they stand accused of rebellion against their new sovereign?”  
  
That pulls her down from the heights. When she asks again, “What would you have me do?” it is no longer rhetorical.  
  
Amandil hesitates again. “I cannot ask you to do this. But I believe you will see the necessity.”  
  
A chill spreads from her core to her fingertips. She says nothing.  
  
At last Amandil speaks. “He seems to believe himself in love with you. He may listen to you when no one else will. And you—Míriel, I can’t ask this of you--.”  
  
“Go on,” she says.  
  
“You may be able to warn us in times of danger. To steer him away from the most dangerous passes, and to—when you cannot head them off—undermine his acts.”  
  
He is suggesting she become a spy. That she, who had ruled Numenor, now lie and sneak and steal.  
  
But it is precisely because she has ruled Numenor that she would do anything for it. If this is the way the music of creation has appointed for her to serve her country and the Valar, she will do it.  
  
Only it is a hard master that would demand this of a servant. And she has been long used to being the master.  
  
“Or we could follow your path. I am with you to the death.” There at last is the oath she sought. It only confirms her in her decision.  
  
“I’ll do it,” she says. “I can’t run away from this.”  
  
In the morning, she returns to the palace.


End file.
